Humanity 02 - Raven Flames Read online

  Michael pretended to take their praise graciously, nodding his head and voicing his thanks in a subdued voice. “The others are meeting us at the Dark Child’s home?”

  Mr. Taylur nodded. “Lady Wanderson told the Lords and Ladies to come.”

  Michael fought another eye roll with difficulty. The insistence of using titles made him physically sick. He wondered if they knew how stupid they sounded, or if they were just that damn stupid to begin with.

  “The other Nobles were upset that they wouldn’t be able to share in the…revelry,” Wanderson said, her voice a throaty purr. The word came out sounding dirty. It was the euphemism for the murder of a Paramortal. “There was no way that most could just leave and take a plane. Especially without making it seem suspicious. You know she’s going to make the news.”

  “It’ll be good publicity for us,” Michael heard himself say. “She’s only the third Paramortal to try to attend a human school. The other two quit and went into hiding before we got them, but she just happened to choose the city with our strongest network. There aren’t many humans that support the Altruistics. We are a more powerful group than they are, and we’re going to prove it tonight.”

  “Well said,” Wayne said, coming up behind him. He put a hand on his shoulder and Michael fought his grimace.

  “Thank you, Monarch.” Again, the title sounded stupid to him, but calling him Monarch was better than calling him father.

  “You may leave us now, Michael. Ready your weapons. I think it should be you to kill the last in Darkcaster’s strongest bloodline. It would be…appropriate.”

  Michael nodded and left without another word, winding his way up the long and sweeping stairs that lead to his part of the house. He had an entire floor to himself. His father wasn’t a strict man when it came to his personal life, and this part of his home was just for him and anyone he happened to bring home. As long as it didn’t mess with HUMANITY, his father didn’t give a damn.

  That’s why she left, Michael thought as he caught a glimpse of the portrait of his mother. He wouldn’t see any others in the house other than that one. Wayne had thrown them out when she’d disappeared over eleven years ago. Michael had been six at the time.

  She didn’t take me with her. His mother, Lily, was every bit as delicate as her name suggested. How she’d lived as long as she had underneath his father’s tyranny was beyond him. Why had she left him to live in this hell? Was it because she saw what he’d become? What Wayne had trained him to be? His mother had been a loving soul. To have her son become a ruthless murderer would have turned her stomach. Of course, she would have run. He couldn’t blame her for that. He would have, too, if he could.

  He’d inherited her straw color hair—his father’s was a darker, almost brown—but the feather-light texture shown in the carefree portrait was something his hair would never see. It was as coarse as an animal’s fur, reaching his shoulders. Her face, round and innocent, was nothing like the sharp angularity of his own, covered with the rough dark stubble of a teen’s almost beard. Only his eyes were like hers. It was like looking into a mirror. Her icy blue, kind eyes staring into his. They were lighter than Wayne’s cruel sky.

  Michael turned from her smiling expression that accused him. He went into the first room on the right, where he kept his weapons. He had his own kitchen, bathrooms, bedroom and another bedroom he brought the girls from school to. He had a house within a house.

  A house within a house, but not a home. The thought was distant as Michael studied the slender blades laid out on his bed. The knives were short and only slightly curved. They gleamed from when he’d been bored and cleaned them the night before and he slipped them in their sheaths that rested on a belt he wore. The sheaths were beside the two gun holsters on the leather, but he hoped he wouldn’t draw a weapon tonight. It would be better if they killed her in her sleep. He didn’t enjoy the thought of trying to take her down if she was allowed to use her powers.

  He’d killed Dark Children before, but never when they fought back. There was a reason why they were feared even by the other Paramortals. Their powers relied on darkness, on fear and illusions. The other Tribes of Power were pure elemental—Thorn Heathens, Flame Tongues, Cloudlings, and Rot Scales—they only had so much control over their elements. They had power, but he could deal with them. Day Spawn hardly had any powers. They sometimes had special mind gifts, but mostly they only healed and were pacifists. He actually hated killing them; it was almost like killing children.

  But Dark Children…they were different. They had no qualms about protecting themselves, and their powers were more mystical—utterly unpredictable. He’d felt the strength that had radiated from Mirage as she attacked Derrick earlier that day, and something inside him told him that wasn’t near what she was capable of. After all, she was Darkcaster’s descendent. If Nathaniel hadn’t turned traitor when he did…the stories were clear on her power. She’d wiped out entire camps of humans on her own. Mirage had that potential. He didn’t know why he thought that, but he didn’t try to convince himself otherwise.

  His father wanted him to kill her, and he would. If anything, his fear of what she was capable of would spur him into action. He’d seen only a portion of her power and he wouldn’t allow something like that to live.

  * * * *

  Mirage quivered inside the cloud’s echoing thunder.

  This is a dream.

  She didn’t have the power of flight; she wasn’t a Child of the Breeze. She reached out a hand, trying to claw up a bit of the flighty gray streaks that caressed along her skin. They slid past her, separating against her sharp nails. It was like trying to scoop through the ether of her own power.

  “Call out to your ancestry, Shadowstart.”

  Her back arched at the sound of the voice, her hands rising out from her sides. Echoes. The gray was beginning to streak with black, pooling like around her like slick oil. She could feel the heat of flames at her back. The ground beneath her was burning.

  Mirage was frightened.

  “They come for you. They seek you. You will experience sorrow tonight, Shadowstart.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You will know my name when I want you to know it.” The voice, definitely feminine, seemed strangely like her father’s. The thought made her choke and the memories rose against her bidding. She hadn’t been prepared.

  “Beg for your life, Dark Child scum.” The sound of a whip cracking against something soft – of flesh giving way to leather. Though the humans wouldn’t be able to hear it, she could hear the intake of breath from her father as he fought not to betray his pride. She stood from her hiding spot, the hollow where her father had thrown shadows across her and her mother’s forms. She would stop them.

  “No, Mirage.” Her father’s voice, seemingly so close, echoed in her ears across their weakening Family Cord. It was wavering, but she could still feel his love.

  Mirage stopped, her charcoal runes ceasing their soft red glow.

  “I will take my fate gladly. You are needed more than I.”

  “Beg!”

  The voice that spoke and interrupted her father’s thoughts, God, she’d never heard such a hate-imbued word.

  “The blood that drips may not be the same color as yours, human, but the pain is the same.” Her father’s voice was amazingly sharp—devoid of the agony Mirage could feel in the coiled mess of her aching heart. “One day my people will see freedom. It’s been promised.”

  Gasoline hit him in dousing streams as it was thrown, stinging in open wounds. Mirage couldn’t help the involuntary whimper, but it was lost in the humans’ cries of anticipation. Her father jerked against the rope that bound him between the two trees, a hiss of incantations spewing from his mouth.

  The human struck him, and Mirage fell backward into the hollow, clutching her cheek.

  “Hush your mouth, Dark Child.”

  Her father looked up, and for a moment Mirage saw a flash of the cruel sky eyes that stared ba
ck into his before their minds disconnected. There’d been a flash of gold around the eyes—the Nordic golden mask of a stern king. “I’ve been peaceful. I could have killed your son. I spared him, though he would not have shown the same compassion. I’ve seen what is to come; my ancestor wills this. I would have killed you and your monstrous child if I hadn’t been promised that your fates are sealed. I’ve seen what is to come. HUMANITY falls within Darkcaster’s line.”

  “We’ll see. Once I kill your bitch and spawn that you’re hiding from us, you are the last of her line.”

  The smell of gasoline grew stronger and the flickers from the torches seemed to leap toward her father. She stood again, but her mother’s hand on her wrist stopped her from stepping out of the shadowed crevice. Her mother’s hand, surprisingly strong, pulled her back down into an embrace that pressed her face against her breasts.

  “The pain will be over soon, Mirage,” her father whispered in her mind. She was going to feel her father die. She and her mother would be bound to him until his death…burning, but alive.

  “Daddy…”

  “I love you and your mother so much. Take care of her for me, Mirage. Promise me that you’ll protect her and yourself.”

  Mirage nodded. She was the only one strong enough now.

  The roar seemed something alive as the flames followed the path that had been preordained. It took an instant for them to reach her father.

  Mirage screamed, and her mother muffled the sound against her chest, shuddering in her own effort to keep from calling out. Her mother rocked, hugging Mirage as tightly as she could against the silver silk that clothed her pale, soft skin. It stopped Mirage from seeing, but there was nothing that stopped the stench of burning flesh, the odor of her father burning for another species’ sins…

  All the while, the cruel sky gaze regarded the flickering death. Mirage saw them through her father’s unmoving eyes. They never wavered as he died slowly. Then the pain, the scouring agony that had chased her sanity away, disappeared.

  “Mirage,” her mother whispered breathlessly. “Hide us, or he will have died for nothing.”

  The shadows that crawled from her softly glowing runes were angry tendrils. They cloaked her and her mother tightly, constricting around them in a pulsating blanket. Where the comforting presence of her father had been, there was nothing but a hollow, raw hole.

  Gauthier, her father and the Tribal Chief of the Children of the Dusk, was dead.

  Mirage woke sobbing, a hand clutched over her heart. Her nails dug into her skin as her chest heaved. It was the position she always woke in when she had the nightmare.

  Well, almost.

  She was sitting up. The thing her back leaned against was rough and hard. A wind, full of the salt of the sea, blew her hair out of her face and tangled it in her horns. Thunder rolled, horribly loud in her ears, reverberating through her spine as the lights flickered ahead of her.

  She was in a tree. She was outside.

  What the hell? Mirage thought, standing on the branch that she’d woken on. She’d fallen asleep in her room…

  Damn, she had to start thinking clearly. She shook her head, clearing away the grogginess from just waking up. Ahead of her the lights flickered in gaining urgency.

  Lights?

  “Oh God,” she whispered. Her hand, which had just relaxed against her, clutched at her chest again as she realized the blinking lights ahead of her weren’t artificial, but natural and ethereal against the darkness.

  Fire tinged in black.

  “Mom!” Mirage dropped from the top of the tree, landing on her feet easily and sprinting the instant she touched ground. In less than ten seconds, she reached the inferno that had been her home for less than two days.

  “MOM!” Her scream was a screech that shook the ground. The word had been a mere thought, the sound that escaped her lips hadn’t been any language—just a howl of despair. Her power was there for her when she embraced them, the ebony marks on her skin glowing scarlet.

  “Mirage…” She could feel her mother in the remnants of the bond that had been created by her father when he’d married her mother. Tranquility had been a Child of the Dawn, and the Family Cords that had bound them so tightly had been nearly impossible for her to keep intact without the power that her father had lent. Mirage couldn’t until the Transition. Still, it was enough to know she was alive. Hurt…but alive.

  The shadows seemed to rise from her own darkness, and she knew that the people that had set fire to her home had hidden, waiting for her to come. They’d drawn her in, like a moth to their fire. She wasn’t able to react while one grappled her from behind. Another, hidden behind a burnished black metal mask, struck her in the stomach. It doubled her over and only the woman that held her from behind kept her from falling.

  “You should have known not to try to live with the humans, Dark Child,” he said. Her heart plummeted as she recognized Derrick’s voice.

  “Derrick…” she had to speak past gasps as she tried not to throw up. He’d hit her hard enough that she saw spots of black against the dancing lights. “I’m going to…kill…you.”

  The woman shoved her forward, and Mirage stumbled against the flat, sandy ground. Thunder cracked above them again, and Mirage felt the first drop of the gods’ heavy burden finally begin to fall. She prayed that the rain would fall quick and hard to help her with the fire her mother was trapped in. A boot, tipped with a heel, pressed between her shoulder blades, putting a stop to her muttered prayers.

  “Your mother’s burning.” It was Mrs. Wanderson. “Just like we watched your father burn.”

  The anger that rang through Mirage spread, boiling beneath her skin, and when she opened her eyes all she could see was red.

  Wanderson screamed as she was lifted into the air. Mirage stood slowly, the shadows that enveloped her body elevating her in an embrace of helping hands. Wanderson’s screams cut short as Mirage flicked a hand and her body flew backward, hitting the trunk of a palm tree. She fell, limp, as Mirage’s wall of shadows shoved Derrick backward and into a boulder. Mirage ignored the others that had stood, her powers singing urgency into the back of her mind. She entered the burning home, the fire pushed back by her own raven flames.

  * * * *

  Michael watched the display of dark power, barely suppressing the rising fear in his heart. Why had she not been in the house? Fire, one of the few things that could honestly kill a Dark Child, would have killed her without this confrontation if she’d been in her home.

  “Michael, it’s your turn,” his father whispered. The mask he wore was gold, reflecting the fire and Mirage’s dark aura. Carved with Norse designs across the cheeks and into the beard of the face, the mask rose up behind him in the imitation of a crown. His own mask was silver with similar Nordic designs, but his was more slender and tight fitting, small points like thorns rising from the edges to imitate his cornet.

  “Wanderson…”

  “Is dead,” his father snapped. “She knew the dangers. Your cousin is hurt, but he’ll live. I’ll take care of him. Go.”

  Michael fought the rising fear in the back of his throat. Face a pissed off Dark Child in a fire? He personally would retreat and hope to catch her again, but his father would see that as cowardice. Better his son die in HUMANITY’s honor than be seen as a coward.

  Michael didn’t say anything as he stood and drew his gun. Mirage’s power left a wake of quailing flames behind her. He entered quickly before the fire reclosed their devouring path. He watched her, floating a foot from the inferno, her hair whipping around her in snakes, a circle of a dark halo. There was something ethereally…beautiful…about it. He shook his head and raised his gun. He aimed for her head.

  Michael’s hand shook as he told himself to stop being stupid, to just pull the damn trigger. What was wrong with him?

  Mirage’s power wavered around her and she dropped to the ground a foot from a figure swathed in blackened white. It was a mound of snow in the fire.
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  The mound moved, groaned.

  “Mommy…” Mirage’s pained voice was infinitely gentle as she helped her sit up. Michael could now see the silver hair draped around the body, the pale skin that was brighter than the flames. Blue designs wound across her wrists, trailing up her arm to her elbow in delicate swirls. A Child of the Dawn.

  Fire leaped behind him, causing him to stumble. Smoke filled his lungs and he coughed. Mirage’s head jerked backward, her scarlet glowing eyes settling on him. They narrowed. Fire roared around them, Michael’s gun aimed at Mirage’s head. They were still for a moment.

  “Leave, Humanitarian,” she growled. Her voice echoed around her and him, resonating like a bell against the roar. “I’ve killed one, and I’ll kill more.”

  Michael swallowed, fighting his urge to stagger backward. “You shouldn’t have come here, Mirage.”

  Mirage’s eyes widened, a hand coming up to clutch at her chest. The power left her, leaving the black pools she had as eyes sparkling with tears. She leaned forward, her hair falling in front of her. “I recognize your voice.”

  Michael could barely stand the pain in her voice. “You die tonight.”

  Mirage looked up, black tears trickling down her face. They reflected the glow of her eyes like oil. “Michael…how could you?” Her expression contorted from pain to rage in an instant. Behind him there was a flurry of voices, glass breaking. The next moment, five other Humanitarians masked in their own designed masks flanked him, their guns trained on Mirage as she stood.

  “Give it up, Dark Child,” said a man behind him, Taylur.

  A disgusted snarl rose through her throat and her eyes flickered black and red. There was something different in the power that leapt from her now. It was dark, less coy than what he’d felt from her when she attacked Derrick. There was a cruelty in the ancient force. Mirage stood, her mother’s now unconscious body in her arms.